The Vremalkyr Incursions
The Vremalkyr Incursions were a huge and devastating conflict fought during the Great Crusade. They occurred when the alien and immensely powerful Vremalkyr attacked much of the southern Imperium in 956. M30, and the threat was only destroyed by the intervention of the Emperor Himself. History Invasion The Imperium's advance across the Galaxy was not immune to reversals, as the terrible days of the Rangdan Xenocides and the early onslaught of the Qarith make clear. Twenty two years after Rakham formally joined the Imperium’s hosts, a xenos race of fiendish strength and malevolence made itself known at the Galaxy’s southern edge. The Vremalkyr styled themselves as deities, few in number but possessed of truly godlike power both physical and psychic. Billions of humans lived in thralldom, worshipping these towering figures of horn and stone scale, raising up vast engines of conquest that rivalled the mightiest Titans of the Imperium. These juggernauts, and the host of lesser machines with which the Vremalkyr made war, were invested with bestial minds crafted by the god-pretenders through the sacrifice of millions. It is theorised that some ancient device or power may have contained the Vremalkyr, or that they came from the fathomless dark between galaxies. The concrete facts can tell us only that they overran one world, then a dozen and then fifty after that before they could even be slowed. Worlds thought to be invulnerable were consumed. Psychic fire licked at the edges of Yamatar, threatening to spill over and consume even Iona and Obsailes. The Imperium’s armies closed ranks and stood firm against the terror - records suggest that an unknown Primarch broke an invasion force at Sondheim, slaying one of the Vremalkyr - but they bled for every victory. Redactions such as the above Primarch’s identity make it difficult to ascertain the full scale of the war, but Legiones Astartes Chapters are recorded as being shattered and hastily recombined, and the Legio Destructor are known to have sacrificed two full war maniples at Ghidor and Mori. The Scions Hospitalier and Fire Keepers, led respectively by Seventh Captain Glaucus and Chief Shaltak, took charge of the defences across forty worlds west of Sondheim, but the full weight of the xenos attack was yet to fall. No relief would come soon enough, it seemed, to prevent the southern sectors of Tempestus from being crushed. The Sacrifice of Velthame In the path of the Vremalkyr lay the Velthame Collegiate, a prosperous and powerful group of systems which had arisen in the wake of the Age of Strife, only linked to the outside Galaxy by turbulent Warp channels. Chief among the forces which protected their worlds were the Knight House of Rakham, able to fend off those enemies that penetrated Velthame territory. This region prospered, for their relative isolation shielded them from much of the Age of Strife’s horrors, and they had peacefully joined with the Imperium some three decades before the Incursions began. At the time of the conflict, the bulk of House Rakham was serving either with the Ist Legion or dispersed elsewhere in the Imperium’s uncounted campaigns, with only two hundred Knights stationed in the Collegiate under Grastus Celot, now Castellan of Ilkayla. Owing to the maze of Warp passages, which had remained difficult even for Imperial Navigators to traverse, they had been spared the initial wave of slaughter. Now they saw an opportunity to strike at the adversary’s soft underbelly, one they must take lest their inaction doom billions more - and indeed themselves in time. One hundred and fifty Knights boarded the warships that would take them into enemy space, joined by six million men at arms. Once more, Duke Celot assumed command and once more the crooked paths served to deliver them unseen to a world where a number of the Vremalkyr were performing one of their abhorrent rituals, slaving and devouring the minds of the population to raise a new horde against the Imperium. What we know of that battle comes from the final astropathic messages sent by the fleet and pict-logs from fallen machines, retrieved years later. Their target was identifiable to every psyker aboard the fleet, a swell of aether of energies like a building storm. It called for the swiftest response and so Celot’s attack was nothing short of suicidal, ships sacrificing themselves simply so that their comrades could sell their lives soon afterwards. The other ships turned their guns on the surface to the exclusion of all else, administering the Emperor’s Peace to the captive souls below. Then, as the cruisers and battleships were overcome, transport craft spilled out into the void and shot down to the surface. The Knights and their allies descended to a world already wracked by orbital bombardment and found three of the Vremalkyr. They were wounded, having poured much of their power into the ritual only to be cheated by the bombardment, yet much of their dread vigour remained. They towered over the greatest of Rakham’s sacred armours, and for every wound they were dealt Knights fell, hewed down or simply unmade by psychic energies. Fallen mortal soldiers carpeted the blasted landscape, bodies broken or minds destroyed. Through it all, however, Celot’s Knights were uncowed, slashing and blasting away at the Vremalkyr. The first of the aliens fell, then a second, though it took Celot’s death to achieve it, his Paladin gutted with stone claws. With only eleven Knights remaining, the final Vremalkyr was dragged down and slain, the last survivors dying under the blades of its frenzied slaves. Such an awful cost might seem sufficient for a victory as great as this, but House Rakham had an even greater price to pay. The Vremalkyr were overcome with rage at the death of their kindred, and broke off their invasion of the main body of Segmentum Tempestus to seek out the upstart mortals who had lain their brethren low. The rigours of the Warp passage mattered nothing in their wrath, and it is likely that they sacrificed considerable amounts of materiel and thrall-soldiers in reaching their target. Velthame perished in fire and blood, leaving only bare rock where the proud scions of Rakham had stood vigil for so long. The Counterattack and Purge Whether by design or chance, the destruction of the Collegiate had bought the Imperium time to rally and launch their own attack. The Emperor Himself, with Icarion Anasem, Yucahu Sumakutaa and Koschei Kharkovic at His side, led an armada that threw back the Vremalkyr and put every one of the god-pretenders and their thralls to the sword in a year of brutal warfare. The Harbingers fought under the Emperor's direction for the duration of the counterattack, while the Void Eagles were deployed in a series of scorched-earth and extermination actions. Meanwhile, racing to save Yamatar from being overrun, Koschei matched his own strength against the awful might of the xenos, and is known to have slain at least two during the Salvation of Otachi. He then led his forces in the counter-offensive at the head of a mighty host and fought beside Icarion and the Emperor in the final battles of the campaign. Icarion was to remark in the aftermath that the VIIIth had proved their old moniker well-deserved, and it was deemed the Legion's finest hour by many. Legacy Category:Great Crusade Category:Imperial Campaigns Category:V